Why CR and Sustainability professionals need to get in bed with Brand

There are many articles about why Marketing should give a hoot about CSR, but very few urging Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability professionals to get cosy with their customer-focused cousins. Charlotte West, Business in the Community's Marketplace Director outlines why any CR Manager worth their salt should be getting to know the Brand and Marketing team in 2017.

Brands aren’t just nouns, but verbs too

What on earth is brand? If you are a regular Joe, then the term brand probably conjures up notions of Nike, Starbucks, Virgin – businesses with a clear visual image and personality that sell stuff. A green-hearted social crusader, it might even make you tut, ‘heartless commercialism’ and generally squirm.

If you work in a media or creative agency, then ‘brand’ will pretty much be a synonym for ‘company’, even if Dove, Pot Noodle and Hellmann’s aren’t actually companies in their own right.

Yet "every company has a brand, whether they are consumer facing or not" says Hugh Burkitt, CEO of the Marketing Society. Some celebrities are said to have a personal brand, right? Same goes for cities. Brands aren’t just nouns, but verbs too. It is sometimes described as a promise or an essence – often intangible - or an impression you have of something or someone. "The brand is the whole customer experience. TSB’s purpose, 'Local banking for Britain', isn’t just an advertising idea or a brand line. It’s everything we do, everywhere. So the brand is the entire customer experience" says Nigel Gilbert, Chief Brand and Communications Officer of the bank TSB.

Quite simply, brand is the bit of the business which customers experience. If CR professionals don't think they have a role to play in influencing the customer experience, then they may as well pack up and go home!

So why should CR and Sustainability professionals care about any of this?

1. A way to stay relevant in a fast paced profession

With recent studies by Verdantix showing very few sustainability leaders have full budgetary control, and CR budgets are only growing significantly in 20% of firms, it's clear that collaborative working is needed. Yet Globescan’s 2016 Sustainability Leaders study shows nearly half of sustainability professionals struggle to engage colleagues in other functions. But there's an opportunity afoot - research from Millward Brown shows that increasingly customers are drawing less distinction between the brand and the behaviour of the corporate behind it. If a company’s brand is heavily influenced by activities beyond the control of the Marketing team alone – such as customer service, supply chain operations, employment practices – then it’s plain to see that brand isn’t the domain of one team, and collaboration is required for brand promise to be authentically delivered. As colleagues struggle to deliver an authentic customer proposition in a fast changing marketplace, Sustainability leaders can share insight and expertise.

But act soon - as social purpose becomes more popular in the Marketing world (it’s hard to go a day without reading a purpose related headline on Marketing Week or Campaign), and new communities like Sustainable Brands grow bigger, CR Managers must be plugged into these conversations or risk isolation - or worse, see their budgets slashed further as CR gets labelled as ‘the people who organize volunteering’ or ‘write that report the NGOs like to read’.

2. An opportunity to have a bigger impact on the issues you care about

When Globescan asked what makes a company a leader in sustainable business, the most commonly selected reason was ‘Sustainability strategy is closely aligned with internal culture/values’, closely followed by ‘Purpose integrated into core business via common brand promise’. It's little surprise that companies like Unilever and Patagonia are seen as the best performers; they have a close connection between their social or environmental credentials, customer-facing brand ethos and (increasingly, but still work to be done) product offering. No-one thinks that Interface or Ikea are top sustainable companies because they got the most volunteers out, or their CR report won an award. Sure, you could leave your current job and try to join the Plan A team at M&S. Or you could be THAT rock star who changed their company around, and got shortlisted for BITC’s Responsible Business of the Year. Just sayin’…..

3. A chance to be a growth enabler, not a cost

‘Social value’ or ‘socio-economic impact’ are phrases in the CR world that refuse to go away. Whether its bid teams demanding data to include in tenders, or cost-conscious bosses slashing CR budgets they see as a cost to the business, the mood is that CR teams need to demonstrate how they are helping contribute to commercial growth metrics.

Cost reduction and risk mitigation are just 2 of the 3 key things that the finance and investor community are interested in when they are talking to company bosses about the state of your business. They are mostly interested in GROWTH. Sales from good things you are making that people want. Case in point: new M&S boss Steve Rowe recently moved the Plan A team under the leadership of Marketing Director Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne to help Plan A get more customer focused. So, be part of conversations about how social purpose can be woven in to customer campaigns, or that circular-economy is a growing concept that is not just operationally sensible, but appealing to customers too.

For more support and information about purpose and how to bake it into your brand, visit www.bitc.org.uk/marketplace and download the brand new Purpose Toolkit